Saturday, April 15, 2017

KLEM FM

Dave Wronski plays guitar in a band called Slacktone. Here he shows how to play his song "Avalon Slip." It's gorgeously crafted and reminds me of sailing to Avalon (even though I've never sailed to Catalina).

The reverb gets me -- it's the "wet" sound -- reminiscent of waves. Instrumental surf is a species of surf music that flourished in that brief window between the death of Buddy Holly and the arrival of The Beatles (The JFK era). Dick Dale invented much of the sound, enabled by Leo Fender. But before Dale was Link Wray. And Duane Eddy is credited with the first "proto-surf" song -- his 1958 'Moovin' N' Groovin''.

Back to Dave Wronski -- here is another Slacktone original -- "Into The Blue Sparkle" (2000):

I like the Skacktone sound, and let us not omit an important element of that sound, the tremolo bar, AKA the whammy bar or vibrato bar. That music would not be the same without that.

Is the name Slacktone related to the Hawaiian slack key tuning? That has a fascinating history, and what they called "kī hōʻalu" was derived from the paniolo musicians. Who knew?

OT, but relevant to our previous discussion, while wandering around YouTube I found a piece of music that has some serious arpeggiatin' goin' on. And, as a side note to an OT, I have been listening to classical music my entire life and I like that I can still find pieces I have never heard before.

Reading the dots it took me a minute to figure out why what I was hearing did not look like what I was reading, then I saw the word written above those beautiful whole note and half note chords. Rock on, GF!

Way off topic, perhaps. But it intrigues me, melody. How it sometimes grabs our soul, Harpsichord or Les Paul or, Neanderthal. Oh wait, we don't know Neanderthal rhythms, but I would bet they had them. Stick on a rock.